Electronic displays are commonly used to portray data, e.g., in the form of visual text and/or other images, so the data may be interpreted and/or acted upon. Typically, the operator of equipment associated with the display will control the equipment based, at least in part, on the interpretation of the data displayed. A simple example is an airplane pilot who views a control panel display representing surrounding air traffic, and who then controls the airplane to avoid the traffic.
Typically, the displays and their associated bezels (face plates) and frames (interfacing and supporting hardware) are built to demanding specifications for durability, reliability, and operating life, e.g., based upon industry requirements, and the resulting displays may have relatively complex electrical, chemical, optical, and/or physical characteristics. Each particular application, for example, may require specific performance characteristics from the display, such as the ability to accommodate or withstand varying conditions of temperature, humidity, radiation, ambient light, shock, vibration, impact, chemicals, salt spray, water and fluid condensation, immersion, or other environmental, electrical, physical, and/or other conditions. Due to the high costs associated with such varying and demanding specifications, for any particular application, it is thus economically desirable for manufacturers to produce a common design in high production volume, resulting in COTS displays all having substantially the same characteristics and a limited number of physical sizes. The sizes may vary, but the shapes are generally rectangular with an aspect ratio of approximately three to four. For example, common television and computer displays have an aspect ratio of approximately three to four, and HDTV displays have an aspect ratio of nine to sixteen.
For specialized applications where the market may not be large enough for COTS manufacturers to enter, buyers of displays are required to have displays custom-built to fit their size and shape requirements, at a cost often more than ten times greater than the cost of a COTS display having nearly identical functionality. Alternatively, buyers may choose to incorporate a COTS display into an existing control panel or dashboard opening, e.g., by physically altering the size and/or shape of the control panel opening to match the size and/or shape of the COTS display. For most applications, however, such modifications cannot be made without disturbing the surrounding instruments, controls, and displays already incorporated into the control panel. Such is the case, for example, on an airplane control panel or other vehicle control panel where large numbers of instruments and controls are tightly and efficiently packed into a relatively small area. Even if the appropriate modifications could be made, they are typically cost-prohibitive.
A particular industry where high-cost custom-built displays are used is the avionics industry, which traditionally used square panel openings to house mechanical display devices. To retrofit airplane control panels with electronic displays, the industry began manufacturing custom displays at a relatively high cost and relatively low volume compared to COTS non-square displays that are commercially used in high volume applications. In fact, the control panels in newly-built airplanes designed to use electronic displays are still often made with square panel openings, despite the COTS displays being non-square, in order to maintain the well-established and familiar control panel configurations.